tl;dr You made me realize stuff from your post and how do you live without flow and also this is more or less for me trying to figure what the hell my problem is and why I'm not good at a lot of aspects that make a successful person, also you don't have to read it because its probably an unrelated issue that sounds like mine but its worth mentioning just in case it is and I rarely find anyone that I can relate to with this sort of stuff so forgive me.. just trying to learn more about myself.

in my haste to add more information before I give up trying to explain it i may have added double nested parenthesis and have things i've said twice (maybe even three (probably not.. but definitely double))(its probably not even grammatically incorrect, it just seems like it but looking at this, this probably is.) dont complain about it it just the best way to represent the seemingly infinite amount of edits and explanations I put myself through and also I suck at writing most of the time

I apologize if I have any spelling or grammatical errors, if I'm not typing something that needs to be formatted a certain way then I tend to just write how it comes out of my head and it usually contains some issues.. I tried to avoid the "wall of text" and hopefully split it up and its still understandable.

The only time I get anything done is when I'm in the "flow state". Otherwise I can barely even think about working on whatever it is. It's really affecting my life but now at least I understand it better. I never thought to question why I'm only able to be interested in one or two things at a time but now I do notice that I really could care less about anything other than what I'm interested in at the time (which could be anything). Came out of lurking to say thanks for posting this.

Even though our situations are different. I have no idea why I'm stuck in this position, nothing traumatic happened to me in my childhood but I have been diagnosed with ADHD so that might have something to do with it? I have trouble sitting still and the only time I'm able to is when I'm in deep thought about something I'm interested in and its the most relieving feeling ever, going from a state of being uncomfortable no matter what you do to and everything around you having the same exact volume (as in.. importance? Everything seems like background noise I guess, stuff I could care less about) and I tend to hate to break my usual rituals to achieve being able to intensely focus because they do affect me in ways I can never predict, a small change to my environment for the worse like even something as stupid as the way a certain shirt feels when it rubs across my skin can break anything that I can try to achieve.

Oh, and I can do things like write a full paper for college that meets all the requirements and gets me my best grade when at other times absolutely no ideas come out at all and I sit and stare at a blank page no matter how much I want to just get it done so I have something to turn in. I've failed a class for this and its hard to explain but i think it has something to do with it..

But, the only good things I've done ever that are worth mentioning is when I achieve this state. I can do almost anything or learn anything it feels like. If I wanted to learn it I had almost no trouble learning, while if I attempted to learn something I'm not at all interested in it's just not there. I've gone up to a month where I'm not interested in anything at all and its just static.

Thanks for sharing this article OP and also thanks for posting this comment. I can't entirely relate to you other than it having negative effects (I also neglect a ton of important things just to finish whatever I'm doing, including my already-fragile relationships with people around me.) But you did just help me understand myself better if I do enter the same state as you once did. How did you get over not doing it all the time? If I'm not concentrating on anything like this then I feel lost.

I've fixed most of my issues but this is pretty much me hitting a wall that I can't get past and I'm approaching the point where I'm about to just give up trying to fix it and live an unsuccessful life.

This is the closest someone has been to describing what I feel like so forgive me if I'm thinking of something that's different or connecting two uncorrelated things I'm just trying to figure out what's keeping me from moving on with my life, but could someone help me if you have any advice. Is this a common thing that happens to people? Am I just different and have to accept the (real or fake) gap between me and most other people that I consider "normal" or "people with ambition about things I don't care about".

If it helps anyone I have been really, really socially awkward throughout my life no matter how much I have forced myself to talk It's why this post is so messy sort of but also how I think and how it comes out (if I wasn't typing this I'd probably be having a fake conversation in my head to help myself dissect all the information I just got usually to my (really idealized into someone that listens and understands everything I say but doesn't agree with some of the choices I make because of it, I could be doing better) old therapist because it seems to fit someone I might actually be talking to about this sort of stuff even though I couldnt when I tried so forget this). Most of my relationships I just go through the motions to get some unimportant material reward from it which I do feel bad about but the other person is happy so whatever. I just re-read your paragraph about the having many things in life that are pleasurable and I do have to admit that I dont have many actual friends, mostly just people who find the same things funny as me.. being a smart-ass or sarcastic not because I care just because its funny to me.

Most things that I have found after looking on Wikipedia or various other sites mention abuse or some other thing along those lines but nothing like that has ever happened to me, so what is it and how do i fix it..

Once again sorry... not trying to steal number and lowercase letters guy thread but just trying to go with the flow.. might be one of the only chances I get to articulate this since its hard to explain when I don't want to talk about it or i get mixed up with some unimportant non-related issue and thing something completely different. Parents are no help, therapists just tell me I'm addicted to games (at least the one I went to. I have to give her credit I do spend an unhealthy amount of time playing video games but the video games are not the issue since I have no problem just not playing them when I have other stuff to do. The whole reward thing for leveling up is not the addiction its the flow that's the issue, games are one of the only ways I can show how good I am at something and I feel at home while in a counter strike: global offensive match because I am required to pay attention to a ton of different things at once (their general spray method, the sound of them reloading, footsteps anywhere around me, making sure I don't lose focus when I need to move my crosshair to their head and only shoot twice because its all I need to kill them, not a single bullet more.(it would be one shot if my favorite gun, the m4a1_silencer was a one shot headkill but sadly it does just a little but under 100). I seem to keep too much to myself to share a lot of other stuff I've done, and a lot of it is hard to show since it was just me indulging in another info binge on a subject I find interesting that I only want to talk about while I find it interesting and after that if I don't need it its still in my brain somewhere, waiting to be thought of again and my memory refreshed. Or its something that I drew that I spent a hour changing a few things to make nothing about it distract me from the main point of the picture and only emphasize it in subtle ways)

Why can i see the issue but feel so helpless when I try to fix it

if i need to type this into a less fragmented more readable format I can try to but it might just end up in me regretting what I said in the first place and leaving its a lot easier that way and a lot less confusing.

this is me opening up as best as I can and I'm surprised at how much I wrote


I also want to point out that I do have an obsession with video games, but not playing them, just that i feel they are the best medium at fusing music, literature, and art and we can use them for so much more than just entertainment. And I like figuring out how their systems work and what part does what and how that affects the player. I don't know if this is important, if its not disregard it. And also I want to help people like me out and make a video game that allows the thought process to naturally figure out how to deal with shit i guess? If that makes any sense.. i think its possible and it would help a lot of people if they suddenly realized why they enjoy my game so much if im part of a group of people that all have the same issues as i (it would finally make me feel at home.. if i could give someone else that struggles with that that feeling by letting them know they're not alone then I can be happy with my creation... it sounds stupid when i type it out but its one of the only things i feel like i can give to other people and ive been really dedicated to it I even picked up programming again after a year or two hiatus because i burnt myself out like usual but this idea gives me more motivation than I could have ever wanted)